Smoke Alert

Yes, there is an alert because someone is blowing smoke up our ass.

The Army wants to eliminate almost thirty thousand solider positions while at the same time adding another infantry division. This makes no sense at all ... unless the Army is providing smoke to cover the movement of career opportunists who want to protect their cushy jobs.

Army May Reduce Force by 29,000 Soldiers

WASHINGTON -- Budget cuts may make the U.S. Army lay off 29,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, a Pentagon official said as GOP lawmakers sought to restore defense funding.

"I hate to throw out numbers, but I have seen numbers that will approach the enlisted category perhaps as high as the mid-20s -- 23, 24,000," Thomas R. Lamont, the Army's top personnel official, told the Senate Armed Services Committee's personnel subcommittee Wednesday.

"And on the officer contingent -- again these are very rough numbers and all based again on assumptions and attrition rates -- officers may go up to 4,500, maybe 5,000," said Lamont, assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs.

"There will be some officers -- and there will be some very good non-commissioned officers -- that will want to stay in the Army and will probably not," added Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, Army deputy chief of staff.

The backbone of every army since before the Romans has been the non-commissioned officers. They're the ones who really get the job done and help maintain unit cohesion. If you start slashing the non-coms, you are hurting the ability of the Army to accomplish its mission. Now let's see how the Army tends to handle this decrease...

From Army.Mil

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (April 26, 2012) -- Joint Base Lewis-McChord will soon be home to the headquarters of the 7th Infantry Division, Secretary of the Army John McHugh announced today.

The two-star headquarters, which will oversee the training and readiness of five of the installation's 10 brigades, will fill an administrative layer between those units and I Corps. The division headquarters will not be deployable, McHugh said.

"The I Corps headquarters has been very, very busy. It's only reasonable, it seems to me, to provide that layer of close-on command support just as we have at virtually every other similar-sized base," McHugh said in a press conference on the installation.

The intent is to install a new level of leadership and oversight to support those units, and ensure that Soldiers are properly trained, equipped and mentored.

McHugh's announcement comes after a period of massive growth for JBLM. Since 2003, the installation has grown by roughly 15,000 Soldiers and seen a military construction program totaling $1.75 billion, putting it among the largest bases in the United States.

[...] The 7th Inf. Div. is scheduled for activation on Oct. 1 of this year, and a commander is expected to be announced in a few weeks. Personnel will begin arriving in early summer.

Joint BaseLewis-McChord has had problems with soldiers being accused of murder and other crimes as well as a high suicide rate. Per the Seattle Times:

"The base has grappled with other tough issues, including a surge in suicides to a record level in 2012 and complaints by some soldiers that doctors had reversed their diagnoses of post-traumatic stress. There also have been acts of violence in the Puget Sound area involving the base's soldiers or former soldiers."

"Base officials have said that any community the size of the base is bound to have its problems and that its reputation has been tarred by 'a small number of highly visible but isolated episodes' that don't accurately reflect the remarkable accomplishments of its service members, including their work overseas and the creation of programs to support retiring soldiers."

First, reducing the number of deployable forces is not going to solve a thing. If post traumatic stress is the problem, throwing these poor men back into combat is like chumming shark infested waters. It's as if they want to make a bad situation worse.

Second, throwing a bunch of politically correct, career officers at a problem never solved anything. If you want something done, get the non-coms involved. Oops, can't do that, they're being escorted out the door.

Welcome to Obama's Army.